Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree (Kobalt)

Graham Reid | Sep 14, 2016 | 1 min read

Distant Sky

Although Nick Cave has often sung about
death from various perspectives – Biblical, murder ballads, the
Devil and so on – this sombre, slow and sometimes uncomfortable
collection has greater and more personal resonance.

His 15-year old son Arthur died in a tragic accident during the period when he was just starting on songs
for a new album, and we might guess from the tone and content here
that many of these were/ written after that event.

In the doco film One More Time With Feeling
shot during this writing and recording process, he addresses his
trauma, but it is evident in each of the eight songs here.

While it usually wrong to presume a
songwriter is being autobiographical, and that Cave here adopts
various personae using the first person, these songs are soaked in
personal pain and grief which sounds so much more intimate and
nakedly revealing than anything in his previous work.

Much of that is down to the eerie sonic
beds created by the Bad Seeds (no searing fiddle or guitar here, just
uneasy atmospherics wrapping around Cave's voice) . . . but the words
sting.

"I used to think that when you
died you kind of wandered the world in a slumber 'til you crumbled.
Well, I don't think that anymore," he sings on Girl in Amber.

Whatever faith Cave leaned on
previously has been shaken and he confesses his weakness in the face
of tragedy on the eloquently simple I Need You: “Nothing really
matters when the one you love is gone . . .”

In another context and with a different
delivery that could apply to a lover, but here the shake in his
fragile voice pushes it towards another meaning entirely.

This can be a difficult journey through
the heart and soul of man who uses songs to address his grief . . . but the
title track which closes the collection is buoyed up by warm synths
and an almost uplifting melodic line as Cave suggests a glimmer of
hope with acceptance as it evaporates at the end.

This won't be Nick Cave's most popular -- or most played -- album, but it may well be among his most important.

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Your Comments

Lisa - Sep 20, 2016

Hi Mr. Reid,
I love this album already, but we are considerable fans of Nick and Warren in this house. To me it sounds elegaic, understandably I suppose. It avoids much of the knowing smart-arsery of many Bad Seeds albums, though I always enjoy that too. I think it will be one of my favourite Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds albums, probably for it's honesty. There's no requirement for the listener to feel maudlin knowing the back-story either. I think it's quietly uplifting.
cheers,
Lisa

A little bit of a stretch here but let's get into reference points for
this British duo of Jack Cooper and James Hoare, the former sporting
a perfect mid Sixties comb-forward fringe.
This
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